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How do we know the terrorist story isn't just a story made for the public? I've noticed how Al-Quaeda became a scape-goat for a lot of things these days. I could be wrong of course, but the media's always had a way of giving people something to focus on to distract them from the real issues, and I don't mean just the US. The media has a historical reputation of this all over the world.

Location: Somewhere over the rainbow, in a house dropped on an ugly, old woman.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

How do we know the terrorist story isn't just a story made for the public? I've noticed how Al-Quaeda became a scape-goat for a lot of things these days. I could be wrong of course, but the media's always had a way of giving people something to focus on to distract them from the real issues, and I don't mean just the US. The media has a historical reputation of this all over the world.

Good question. And the answer is: "we don't."

Of course, it's not just terrorism; we currently use child pornography as our current boogyman to justify all sorts of things, and ensure the public doesn't question things too much.

There were witches, and then socialists, and then the Japanese (WW2 internment camps), and then Nazi's, and then the communists and the USSR... But when we won the cold war, we needed a new enemy to make the citizenry afraid. And the "War on Terror" is a great one, because it can't ever be won. So we can enriching our friends at the public's expense, by continued military funding and security theater that doesn't make us safe, but puts on a good show.

The terrorist's goal is to spread fear, and I'd say they are winning as long as we allow fear to rule us. There isn't going to be anymore 9/11 style attacks. So we should be fighting back hard against things like the Patriot Act, warrant-less wiretaps, and "suggestions" to shut down servers.

That's the American thing to do.

And if you're not an American, fight hard to avoid your government bowing to American imperialism. And do NOT come to our country; you'll find it a big hassle and won't be treated well, what with the body scanning and the no-fly lists, and the fact that you can be arrested and detained for doing something that, while legal in your country, is illegal in ours.

Reminds me of a comedy show I saw in Italy where this guy said "Gentlemen, go to visit America, before America visits you."

Even now, that saying rings a certain amount of truth because the US has had a historical reputation for sticking its nose into other people's business. While it's true that on certain occasions it has worked, it hasn't for many others. Vietnam was a failure, the gulf war remained mostly unresolved and (knowing I'm gonna get negged for saying this) neither has the second, which resulted in anarchy and rebellion in Iraq. Much of the old conflict in Afghanistan still remains after the Soviets were kicked out of there by the US. As it turned out, the US were no different. Even they wanted the oil.

In essence, you're right. The 9/11 attacks were an example of a brilliant success in inspiring fear among the people, assuming it was indeed an act of terrorism. People have been terrorized ever since and have been ruled by fear. But who are the real terrorists? Al Quaeda or the government? Ever since Al Quaeda, the US has been imposing more and more regulations, each one stricter than the last, to keep the population supposedly safe. But safe from what? The only occasion where the US came directly under attack was in Pearl Harbor long after the beginning of WW2 in Europe. The US was entirely in the offensive for the remainder of the war and has been directly involved in other country's affairs since then with the formation of the League of Nations and later the United Nations (both headquartered in the US). The US mainland never came under attack at all.

Al Quaeda attacked in very specific places (again, assuming it was them who attacked) but now, after all these years, what have they done? Who have they killed? Where is their leader? Is he still alive? All these questions remain obscure to the public and for what? Who is the enemy of the US? Why aren't we focusing on North Korea, who are the ones that really have weapons of mass destruction and are not afraid to use them? Same goes for Iran. Why not them? Because one of them doesn't have the oil resources, and the other, while it does have oil, also has its ways to defend themselves. The Anglo Persian Oil Company (later renamed to Anglo Iranian Oil Company) was a prime example of how such a conflict could have escalated to another war and I still consider the world lucky that things went the way they did at the time. The US is too afraid to get into another cold war. If free trade and globalization was working the way it should be, we wouldn't have any of this.

So my question remains, with all these other unanswered questions, who is the real terrorist? The ones attacking, or the ones controlling the people with the excuse of the ones attacking?

Now, I'm not saying the US is the only one doing this kind of thing. Don't think for a second my gripe is only with the US. All countries are doing this. Italian media is hiding Berlusconi's involvement with the Mafia and on top of that, news channels and papers hardly focus on real issues and tend to focus a lot more on gossip and talk show material. To me, that is even worse than what the US is doing. Shame on you Berlusconi! And shame on you Emilio Fede for glorifying him!

Man, America is so mean, huh? Trying to protect its citizens, and yet we've got skeptics refusing assistance. I think it was well within the gvrnmnt's power to shut down those blogs, they were a threat.

Man, America is so mean, huh? Trying to protect its citizens, and yet we've got skeptics refusing assistance. I think it was well within the gvrnmnt's power to shut down those blogs, they were a threat.

Um.... read more carefully. A few specific blogs were a possible threat (nonetheless, the information (e.g. how to make bombs) is available in many places on the Internet or can be just recreated from scratch by a clever person). The complaint is that thousands of completely innocent blogs were shut off with no explanation and no recourse. Roughly the same as turning off the telephones of an entire town of 75000 people because 3 or 4 people may be "bad guys" and using some phones. No problem, people can still communicate, right? (/sarcasm)

Basically, it looks like Burstnet took the "lazy/incompetent admin route" and shut it all down rather than freezing the specific blogs under investigation. They have the "right" to do so (their server)... but they left a very bad taste in the mouths of thousands of bloggers who might choose to go elsewhere now.

"America" has a long record of abusing its citizens to "protect them" (particularly starting in the 20th century) and that's why (as the Founding Fathers intended) constant vigilance is required to make sure we don't slip into a police state where the rule-of-law can be ignored. The situation has been complicated in the last 50 years or so with the integration of "super-entity" corporations into the power equations.

Location: Somewhere over the rainbow, in a house dropped on an ugly, old woman.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Komari

Man, America is so mean, huh? Trying to protect its citizens, and yet we've got skeptics refusing assistance. I think it was well within the gvrnmnt's power to shut down those blogs, they were a threat.

Then why haven't they shut down that great bastion of dissent, that building full of dangerous ideas on how to make dangerous things, that's called your local library?

Really, information on bombs is so trivially easy to find nowadays, but they have you so running around in fear that me even mentioning this is probably going to get me put on one of those secret lists (like the no-fly list).

Anyway, in response to Yoko, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. And it's interesting that you mention Italy, because pre-WW2, they were a fascist state. Now what exactly is a fascist state? Well, if we go to wikipedia/Fascism:

"Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined left-wing and right-wing political views, but it gravitated to the political right in the early 1920s."

Bolding is mine. Now, what do we have today? Huge multi-national corporations seeking to change various nation's laws to give themselves more power and money. It makes someone look at you funny, though, if you attempt to say that the US is on the road to fascism. But the facts are that the government and huge corporations are getting in bed together; ACTA anyone? Where the US, at the behest of multi-nationals, are attempting to shove our lame copyright laws on other nations. That's why the meetings are kept secret.

It's no real deep reason, just plain old greed, and taking advantages of opportunities like 9/11.

In a perfect (read: more economically intelligent) world, the media firestorm would focus on that, BurstNET would lose customers and go out of business as a result of their laziness and incompetence, and we'd be fine.

Instead, the furor is directed at the government, most people don't even know the name of the server farm and they probably won't lose much in the way of business, if any at all. They'll continue to perpetuate incompetence.

This is the core problem with America and its economy. Bad businesses don't die and it's both the government's fault for propping them up, the media's fault for crying about all the wrong things and our fault as consumers for not getting tough and doing without when a company does us wrong.